The government of June 1936 is no more. Dream or nightmare, there was something unreal about the year just passed. Everything depended on the imagination. A cooler look is needed for that prodigious history, still so close, yet already, alas, so far away. Imagination is both the fabric of social life and the motor of history. Real needs, real resources and interests act only indirectly, because they do not figure in the consciousness of crowds. It requires attentiveness to become aware of even the simplest realities, and human crowds are not attentive. In the meantime, imagination is and will remain a factor whose importance in human affairs it is almost impossible to overstate. But the effects that flow from it will vary depending on how we manage it -- or indeed, neglect to manage it.